Calling all cat lovers: The first-ever Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival, a two-day celebration of cats and cat culture, featured famous internet felines, a kitten lounge, cat yoga and more.

Before I drove to San Jose to report on the first-ever Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival, a two-day celebration of cats and cat culture, I figured I should talk to an expert. So, I googled “San Francisco cat expert” and contacted the first search return: Daniel “DQ” Quagliozzi of the cat consulting business “Go, Cat, Go.”

Mostly, I told him, I was trying to figure out “Why cats?” As in, why do people like cats and build conferences around cats and why do I waste so much time watching videos of cats knocking stuff off shelves or freaking out at the sight of a cucumber?

He offered a disquieting, possibly self-destructive answer.

“We’re mystified by them because they puzzle us. Because they are puzzles that need to be solved. … How do I get this animal to love me back?” Later, he told me he’s not sure “you ever truly solve the puzzle.”

Valerie Heimerich of Sassy Static wears cat-theme makeup at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

Valerie Heimerich of Sassy Static wears cat-theme makeup at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

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Valerie Heimerich of Sassy Static wears cat-theme makeup at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

Valerie Heimerich of Sassy Static wears cat-theme makeup at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

Feline fans lap up Silicon Valley’s first cat convention

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The line to get into the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival on Saturday, July 27 (the first of two days), was long and slow-moving. As I waited for entry, I began to sweat, mostly because it was 79 degrees and the sky was clear and the sun was sharp. But also because of the anticipation.

Through the large glass windows of the event center, I saw a woman onstage dressed as a cat, hula-hooping to the 4/4 beat of house music. (Do cats like house music?) At one point the hoop went sailing into the crowd. (I do not think it was on purpose.) I couldn’t see any cats inside. Not real ones, anyway. Just people in full-on cat costumes (think Mickey Mouse at Disneyland) moving slowly and uncomfortably. Up ahead, the Wildcat Mountain Ramblers played folksy, banjo- and fiddle-heavy tunes and made self-deprecating jokes about how nobody was really there to hear them play. People fanned themselves and made small talk, mostly about cats.

“You should have worn your Cat Dad shirt,” the woman behind me said to her companion. She, herself, was wearing a shirt that read “Cat Mom AF.”

“I don’t know where I put that thing,” he said.

Just behind them another man wore a different shirt. “Show Me Your Kitties.”

The internet was created in the late 1960s, largely funded by the U.S. Department of Defense in order to, as I understand it, allow multiple computers to communicate on one single network for Very Important Reasons. Today, the internet exists as a vast compendium of images and videos and memes of cats (and a few other assorted topics).

Baby Cats of California sells original cat-theme clothing at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

(Jessica Christian / The Chronicle | San Francisco Chronicle)

Various theories have been put forward as to why we love to objectify cats. The answer is probably unknowable and also too complicated for a single article. What we do know is that we have been filming cats doing whatever it is that cats do since at least the year 1894 (when Thomas Edison filmed two cats “boxing”); that a 2015 study seemed to show that looking at images of cats could, perhaps, lead to both positive emotions and increased energy; and that, despite the preceding data point, cat owners are less likely to describe themselves as “very happy” (18 percent) compared to those who have a dog (36 percent), no pet at all (32 percent) or a dog and a cat (28 percent).

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Of course, correlation is not causation.

The Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival featured famous internet cats (Lil Bub was there), a man who raps about cats for Youtube views, and a woman called Kitten Lady (a.k.a. Hannah Shaw) whose work as a “kitten advocate” has resulted in nearly 1 million Instagram followers. There was also a cat aerialist (as in a woman dressed as a cat), a cat caricaturist (as in a woman drawing cats) and cat yoga (as in people doing yoga while cats watched from behind Plexiglas). And there were vendors. After paying to get into the cat convention ($30 for one day; $35 for two), one could also pay for cat ears or cat pillows or a piece of cat-whisker jewelry. (It is, the internet later told me, not entirely unheard of for people to collect their cat’s fallen whiskers).

At one point, the emcee announced that there were free Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival hats for those who screamed the loudest. So the crowd screamed and they moshed like people waiting for a bride to throw her bouquet. Only louder and harder.

Full disclosure: I am not a “cat person.” This is not to say that I am an anti-cat person, only that I initially thought I was an unconventional choice when an editor asked me to cover the first-ever Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival. But as the event neared and I began to consider all that I might discover inside the event center, I realized that I was, perhaps, the perfect choice.

I could be dispassionate in my cat journalism — neither a superfan nor a person opposed to understanding the joy others find in loving an animal that seems to offer little in return.

One of many curious facts about the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival: Few actual cats were in attendance. By my (generous) count, there were three dozen cats on Saturday and (according to a producer) 2,200 people. That’s roughly one cat for every 60 people.

A cat lover pets two cats riding in a stroller at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

(Jessica Christian / The Chronicle | San Francisco Chronicle)

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This, I suppose, explains why Live Nude Cats, a separate “lounge” where people could hang out with kittens in small see-through enclosures, was booked four hours in advance. It also explains why one might pay $20 to meet @Sunglasscat, a very charming internet cat (nee Bagel) who was born without eyelids and now has 600 pairs of sunglasses and more than 870,000 followers on Instagram.

In many ways, the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival felt like an exercise in reverse-engineering the internet. If we have spent years pushing cats onto this shared digital platform, Brandon Zavala, the event’s producer, was intent on pulling them out. Visitors could experience cat culture in a bold, new way: In Real Life.

This was the second large-scale cat festival Zavala had organized; the first was in December in Denver. More are planned nationally, and he's already set the dates for the 2020 Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival — June 6-7. Zavala, who lives in New York City and talks very fast, says he's always been a cat person. He calls cats "manipulative" and "wild creatures that do what they want." He says the "earth is owned by cats and humans are slaves to cats."

He loves cats very much.

Jillian Ramos and Abraham Jami were first in line to meet Bagel. The young couple (both in their early 30s) had traveled 120 miles from Sacramento to San Jose. They are both cat people — Ramos more than Jami — and had dressed for the occasion. Jami wore a T-shirt with a robot and a cat duking it out. Ramos wore a black dress with tiny cat heads printed all over it like polka dots.

They graciously let me join them for their one-on-one. (They’d negotiated $20 for two.) I followed them into a small, silver, air-conditioned trailer outside of the main festival hall where Bagel’s owner, Karen McGill, was waiting. Bagel, a big gray cat with a white chest and matching white socks, wore sunglasses lined with red jewels. McGill wore a shirt with Bagel’s portrait on it, done in that carnival, spray-paint tradition.

She explained how Bagel could scrunch up his eyes to sleep, how she has to put drops in them daily, how she paints and bedazzles his sunglasses. She had him try on a few pairs, then persuaded Bagel to show off some dog-like tricks — “shake,” “wave,” “high-five.”

“Tooooo cuuuute,” Ramos said, lifting her voice into that register we save for cats and dogs and babies.

Rachel Leeds of Redwood City takes a break at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

(Jessica Christian / The Chronicle | San Francisco Chronicle)

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This went on for about five minutes, maybe a little more. Bagel didn’t seem to mind.

Afterward, Ramos talked about how she’s always loved cats. Her cat, she says, sleeps on her face. “Usually when I try to go to sleep, he’ll lay on my pillow, but he’ll take up the whole pillow and push me off.” She finds this endearing. As does Jami, who says he, too, experiences this joy. “You can’t demand a cat’s love. You have to earn a cat’s love and that’s just beautiful.”

Ramos knew about @Sunglasscat, even before she knew he would be at the conference. “The cool thing about internet cats is a lot of them have special needs,” Ramos said. “So I think that’s, like, really good for the special-needs cat community.”

Outside the main hall, past the club music and cat videos and side-by-side vendors, was a hallway leading to a room of cat-related workshops. This was where my cat expert, Daniel “DQ” Quagliozzi, joined a panel discussing cats and cannabis — a potential solution, I learned, for cats experiencing stress, pain or inflammation. This was also where two women known as Two Crazy Cat Ladies discussed holistic care for cats. They talked about cats and essential oils, cats and pest control and, just as I was leaving, cats and vaccinations.

“We are not anti-vaxers,” one of the women said. “We are anti-OVER-vaxers.”

At one point, out in the hallway, a group of 20 or so people had gathered around a gray-and-white cat who looked very soft. Their phones were out and they bent down, trying to get the cat’s attention. I followed the leash to the owner.

“Is this a famous cat?” I asked.

Instagram personality Hannah Shaw (a.k.a. Kitten Lady) handles a kitten while hosting a kit-making workshop at the Silicat Valley Cat Convention and Festival in San Jose.

(Jessica Christian / The Chronicle | San Francisco Chronicle)

"Not yet," she replied.

The woman holding the leash introduced herself as Sandra Samman and her cat as Denali. She told me she was bad at social media. Denali, though, is set to be featured in an upcoming Amazon Prime show about "adventure cats," outdoorsy cats who explore the outdoors with their outdoorsy owners.

Later, I saw Denali giving out high fives for $2 a tap — a fundraiser for a cat rescue in Kalymnos, Greece.

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So why cats? This was the question I put, again and again, to the people I met at the convention. Some answers were disappointingly superficial: their “fluffy cuteness” or “fuzzy paws.” Others went a little deeper: their personalities, their weirdness, their curiosity. Better, but still not enough. I have a personality and I am weird, but I only have 1,000 Instagram followers. As for curiosity, well, I’ve heard it kills cats.

The best answer I got, the one that came up the most and felt the most real was simply that cats were work. Getting a cat’s attention, people said, even if just for a moment, feels like a reward.

Daniel “DQ” Quagliozzi, my first call, my cat expert, had told me the same thing, right at the start of my investigation. Getting a cat to love you (if you can call it that) requires a person to slow down, he’d said, to live in the moment, to show some restraint.

Sure, online you can watch a cat do pretty much whatever you want to watch a cat do — slap a crying baby, stuff its head into an empty tissue box, get yakked on catnip.

But in real cat life, “it’s in doing less that … you get more back. That’s where the love comes.” Quagliozzi calls it living in the “meow.”